Thursday, 10 November 2011

When
Jaani grins, her warmth is infectious and my face can’t help but mirror hers.
She has five front teeth left now – ‘old age has robbed the others’ she tells
me very seriously, her eyes threatening to laugh again. Widowed three years
ago, she lives with her son and daughter in law and their son, a little chap
named, of all things, Shaitan Singh (troublemaker)!

“How
old are you Amma?”

I
have to shout so that she can hear me properly. She falls into silence and I am
not perturbed by this. I have often found that against the rural landscape,
where time takes on another pace, numbers like age have a way of being
forgotten. As if, in a place where time is measured by the passing of seasons
and the position of the sun in the sky, remembering one’s age is hardly
worthwhile. She finally decides to give me an answer, “Sixty or so.” I smile
and dutifully note down the answer. My aide, a regular social worker in the
area shouts at her affectionately, “Dukariya
(old woman) you’ve got one leg in the grave and yet you say you’re only sixty!
You must be at least eighty.” She looks back defiantly and I see sparks of the
feisty thing she must have been in her youth. “Are you asking the questions or is
she? Don’t interrupt us.” That silences him for a while and I carry on.

“So
do you avail of the government’s old age pension scheme?”

Her
eyes have mucous in them, the greenish yellow residue has collected at the
corners. She keeps swatting off a pesky fly that tries to sit on her face. I
knew the Rs. 1000/- per month that the scheme provided could be a handy
addition to the household income.

‘Yes,
my name is on the rolls. I get some money.”

“How
much?”

“Some
months I get 1000, some months only 500. This time I got 800 for two months. It
keeps changing.”

“Changing?”
I feared I knew what the answer was but ploughed on, “How so?”

Shaitan
Singh, ever eager to join the ‘elders’ in their conversation, quips in, “Post
master ji brings us the money. He says that sometimes the government doesn’t
send the money and if nothing comes from above, how can he deliver the pension
to us?”

My
aide whispered, “The post master is famous for pocketing some of the pension.
But no one complains against him because they know nothing will happen.” I knew
I was just scratching the surface of the canker of corruption that has invaded
every system of my country. I turn to Shaitan Singh.

The village school. Deserted and silent.

“Do
you go to school?”

“Yes.”

“Which
class?”

“Class
2.” He says this in English. Suddenly, realising he is the focus of the
conversation, he’s standing straight, in attention, his little hands clenched
into fists by his sides, his wide round eyes, attentive. His forehead is
creased into a concentrated frown, this is serious business for him.

“So
why are you not in school today?”

“I
didn’t go because I am in charge of looking after the soyabean crop that has
been cut and left in the fields.”

“Did
you go yesterday?”

“No,
I haven’t gone for the past five days. But it’s ok. Masterji hasn’t been coming
either. And if he doesn’t come, what is the use of going? We don’t even get any
food then.”

I
nod reluctantly, understanding the import of his words. The government funded
midday meal scheme provides one meal a day to school children and serves the double purpose of giving parents
an incentive to send their children to school as well as fighting malnutrition
by providing a nutritive meal to growing children. The scheme, though well
meaning, has been seen as another opportunity to siphon off funds and had a
murky history of missing meals, sub-standard provisions, rice with more stones
than grain and other such woeful tales. Here, however, Shaitan Singh alluded to
the fact that the master was absent from the school when he pleased, and without
anyone to distribute the food, the scheme was dysfunctional.

Later,
acutely disturbed with the scale at which systems were being routinely
subverted, and the normalisation of corruption, I questioned government official. He smiled at my supposed naivety and explained:

“The
benefit that actually reaches a BPL family depends on their relation with the
ward member who is elected at the village level. But that is not enough. The
ward member must have a voice in the Gram Sabha which must be then presented
further in the Panchayat Samiti. All this is a delicate balance of how much
power you have, how well you have been oiling the system and of course, how
much clout you have. Most of all you have to pray that as the money moves
downwards from the centre to the State through the district and block levels to
reach the village, enough of it trickles down, without being diverted into
‘other’ channels, if you know what I mean. And of course as the list of BPL
families moves up the hierarchical ladder, you must hope that your name makes
it all the way. Frankly, it is less your actual depravity and more your
networks and how you milk your contacts that get you the ‘free’ seed and
fertilizer, or in this case your pension.”

It
was the answer I knew and yet, I had been hoping to hear something different.
For all the money being poured into various poor-oriented schemes, the
mechanisms to deliver the benefits were as ill-equipped as earlier. The change
we need is not in the amounts being spent but the channels it is flowing
through.

I
think back to my conversation and Jaani’s nearly toothless grin. Her smile,
reflected in Shaitan Singh’s round eyes. I had been asking about the new enikat (small dam) across the village
stream and how the rain water collected in it had been used. Holding rainwater
for longer periods, the structure was particularly helpful during the lean
summer months. It also checked the stream banks from eroding when the monsoons
are particularly bountiful. Seeing I was hell bent on knowing all about the enikat, as I was leaving Shaitan Singh
shouted out – “Didi! Dekho!” And with a brilliant display of showmanship, he
jumped into the pooled water, his little limbs paddling furiously in the water.
I laughed, and saw Jaani looking at his youthful mirth wistfully. I knew from
my conversation, that, like her pension, water in this land was unreliable. In
a few months this pool would be dry.